Inner Wisdom

Samhain (SOW-in) is the last of the annual sabbats celebrated by modern witches. It honors both our ancestors and the final harvest.  It marks the end of the lunar year and the beginning of a new one.

Whether you celebrate the new year in September with Rosh Hashanah, in October with Samhain, at the end of December when the calendar ends, it is typically marked by making a resolution to change.

We constantly challenge ourselves to learn something different and to go to new places. We might pick up a book by an unfamiliar author or listen to a podcast that piques our interest. We are constantly curious. We thirst for knowledge and understanding.

This year, I challenge you to challenge yourself by signing up for my FREE six-day live class.

Starting November first (That’s tomorrow!) I’ll be teaching Inner Wisdom: Your Guide Within.

In it we’ll explore

  • Signs, symbols and synchronicities
  • Oracle and tarot cards, the differences, and how to use them
  • Connecting with your angels, spirit guides, and ancestors
  • Working with dreams
  • Working with affirmations
  • Energy clearing

In addition to the live calls each day, there’s a Facebook group for practice and support, printable worksheets, and on the final day, we’ll be giving away an oracle deck to one lucky winner.

This course sets the groundwork for moving to the next spiritual level in your life.

Leveling up means you will be in alignment with your true purpose. It will allow you to manifest your desires more quickly.

Working with your guardians, guides and angels will show you how to co-create with the Universe.

Learning your personal lexicon of symbols and synchronicities will take you to more advanced spiritual practices.

If you’re reading this, it’s for a reason. You have been brought here because you are ready to knock down your limiting beliefs and to take daily steps that are aligned with your highest good and greater purpose.

If you’re ready, and I believe you are, click below to enroll. Your future self is waiting.

Click here to learn more

Feeling Out of Sync?

Intake, ignition, power, exhaust. Intake, ignition, power, exhaust. Intake, ignition, power, exhaust.

Who else knows the stages of the four-stroke engine? Just me?

It’s probably the sound my heart makes. Intake, ignition, power, exhaust.

I was born in Detroit back when Detroit being called the Motor City meant something. In the fall, my dad and I would go look at the new model cars as search lights drew us from one dealership to another, like moths to a flame.

You might need to be from Detroit to know there are five events in the four-stroke cycle. It’s actually intake, compression, ignition, power, exhaust. But you don’t have to be from there to know that if one piston is working and the others are not, you’re in for a bumpy ride.

When one thing is off in our lives, it makes it easier for something else to be out of sync. It always seems to snowball, doesn’t it? You’re already running late, you spill your coffee on your shirt, you trip and stub your toe on the way upstairs to change.

When you finally get into the car you realize the gas gauge is on empty and there’s no way you can make it on the fumes that are left in the  tank, but you can’t get to the gas station because of the construction detour.

When nothing seems to be going right, it feels like there’s no salvaging the day. May as well buy a pink sprinkle donut to try to sooth your frayed nerves.

Before you give in to the siren song of pastry, here are some things to try.

  • List three things you’re grateful for (cotton sheets, Netflix, electricity)
  • Straighten your desk (or kitchen counter) for three minutes. After each tiny accomplishment, give yourself some shine. “Threw away a scrap of paper! Yes! Took my coffee mug to the sink! Way to go! Put a book back on the shelf! You GOT this!”
  • Make a to-done list. Put some things that are already done on your to-do list and cross them off.

Here are some more esoteric things to try to get your “pistons” working in concert with each other.

  • EFT, or tapping. Nick Ortner is the tapping guru. Find him on youtube or get the app.
  • Put your palm on your forehead. This draws the blood up to your forebrain and interrupts the fight-or-flight response.
  • Place the pads of your fingers on your forehead and your thumbs on your temples. You can even massage your temples if you like. These neurovascular points will lift you out of the bad-mood spiral.
  • Make a figure eight around your eyes with the first two fingers of one hand until you yawn.
  • Send your negativity into the ground. Stand on grass or dirt and imagine the earth pulling the negative energy out of you. Or sit wherever you are and imagine a cord from your root chakra down into the center of the earth drawing out the unwanted energy.
  • Call on Archangel Jophiel. Ask her to allow you to see the beauty and love around you. See her warm yellow light enveloping you.
  • Watch a video of puppies. Puppies (or whatever baby animal is your jam) and a lousy day are mutually exclusive.

You Are Magic

You are magic.

I’ve said it before. You won the jackpot. Out of all the genetic combinations possible between your parents, it was you who was born. Your parents, your grandparents, even your great-grandparents dated other people before they got married, they may have even been engaged to someone else and then called it off. So many pieces had to fall into place for you to arrive.

As Samhain (SAH-win) approaches (Samhain is witchy talk for Halloween) , the veil between us and our ancestors thins. (Halloween, or Hallowe’en is a shortening of All Hallow Even, the evening before All Hallows Day which precedes All Souls Day)

This is the perfect time to reflect on your lineage and to give thanks for everyone who came before you. Some of them went to great lengths and endured hardships, if not atrocities, to ensure you got here.

My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was adopted. The story goes something like this.

My great-grandmother desperately wanted a child. She finally conceived and carried the baby to term, only to have a miscarriage. While at the hospital, she learned of a woman who was having what seemed like her fifteenth child. Her family couldn’t afford another mouth to feed, another body to clothe. The women met, made a deal, got the Salvation Army to handle the adoption and everyone left happy.

Especially me. I’m happy to be here, to have a chance to do what I love, to fulfill the soul contract that I made before this life to heal others. To ensure that my son and daughter and their children and their children’s children can fulfill theirs.

I’m not sure if the dead great-grandmother I used to talk to was the birth mother or adopting mother of my grandmother, but she and I had a connection when I was little.

When I clear energy, dead people still come through and send messages to their loved ones. With only one exception they have all communicated nothing but love. Just last week, I was working with a client. We were talking about her father. I said, “I’m having trouble clearing because I’m seeing fireworks shaped like a heart and all I can smell is roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy.” My client said, “Oh! That was my dad’s favorite meal.”

We have two weeks before Samhain. Plenty of time to honor your dead and tell them how much they mean to you, whether you knew them personally or not. Here are some ideas.

  • Sit in meditation, invite them to join you, and thank them
  • Prepare and eat their favorite foods
  • Donate money to a cause they believed in (My family donates to the Salvation Army)
  • Pour a libation, that is pour a drink onto the ground for them
  • Create an altar with photos or add photos to your existing altar
  • Share your memories

My grandmother died when I was four but that doesn’t mean I don’t have plenty of memories of her. She had a real sense of style. She was a horrible cook. Her name was Evangeline (the Salvation Army are evangelists after all), but everyone called her Babe. She never had a full drink, just a little in a juice glass (that kept getting topped off).

But my most vivid memory of her was after I was in a car accident. It was the early 1960s. My mother was driving, and I had been in the front seat without a seatbelt. My mother stopped short, I went flying and hit the dashboard. I had a gash over my eyebrow and was bleeding like crazy. My mother drove straight to her mother’s house and plunked me on the sofa while she went to freak out. My grandmother told me to come with her into the kitchen where she would give me some Vernors. Vernors is a ginger ale everyone in Detroit drinks and believes to have magical medicinal properties. They’re fanatical about it. Upset tummy? Cough? Headache? Grouchiness? Bleeding from hitting the dashboard? No need to go to the doctor; have some Vernors.

It didn’t work. I had to get stitches. And I still can’t stand the smell or taste of Vernors.

Words Are Magic

Words are magic.

I knew this from a very young age.

When I was five, I started learning Spanish. I was jealous of my friends who got to go to Hebrew school.

I remember watching my dad read the newspaper and wondering how he could do that in his head.

When I was seven or eight, I decided my life goal was to speak seven languages. When I was seventeen, I discovered a life-long passion, linguistics—the science of language.

But I had always known the magic of language.

I’m sure it’s no surprise that my pet peeve is people who don’t choose their words carefully. Or who have no respect for what words mean. Prodigal does not mean returned. There’s a difference between phase and faze, between jibe and jive. Don’t get me started on there, their, and they’re.

Every word we utter, or even think can have profound consequences. Every sentence is a magical spell.

Affirmations, of course. Every day, in every way, my joyous prosperity grows and grows. My life is an adventure taking me wonderful new places. I choose to see the beauty and love that surround me.

And self-talk. I’ve written about that before, about how seemingly little things like “I’ll never figure this out” become self-fulfilling prophecies. How self-deprecation does us no favors.

Look at the emotions these sentences create:

I want to kiss your elbow.
What was that noise downstairs?
He ruined listening to my favorite album for me.
You‘re going to have twins!
Let’s play Twister.
I brought you a cup of coffee.
It’s stage 4 cancer.
I trust you with my secrets.

How about word superstitions? Voldemort, or He-who-must-not-be-named (speak of the devil and he shall appear). Saying “God bless you” after someone sneezes (but never after someone coughs). Using euphemisms for death. Saying “dead” doesn’t bring it about any more than saying “pregnant” makes that happen.

Authors create magic every time they write. They draw us into another world, introduce us to new people, change our mood, our outlook, or our mind all with words.

I challenge you to create a little bit of your own magic, to write a story in one sentence.

It can be as simple as “When he walked into the room, I knew my life would never be the same.”

Or as clunky as, “Cass sighed and called for the jaws of life to release the man from the car that was upside down on her front lawn, blaring INXS.”

Or finish this sentence, “What if…”

What can you create with those two words? What do they offer? What spell can they cast? Where can they take you?

What if… you believed in magic?

The Power of Magic

When my daughter was little, Santa brought her a magic kit. She was so excited about it. We sat down on the floor of my parents’ family room (which probably still had gold shag carpet, impeccably raked) and opened the box. A box of magic!

We pulled everything out and I said, “Let’s see what the instructions say.”

I saw her face fall. It wasn’t a box full of magic after all. It was instructions and adult involvement.

I still feel guilty about shattering her belief in magic. I wish I could go back and say something to make it right. Something like, “There is definitely magic in the world—Santa simply misunderstood what you asked for.” I wish I would have thought to show her how both real magic and stage magic work.

I love both kinds of magic. My husband and I went to the Magic Lounge in Chicago last Friday. He likes to try to figure out how the tricks are done. I prefer to be astounded. And magic, either kind, should astound.

Years ago, I was out with my friend Jean. From seemingly out of nowhere I started talking about my old buddy JR. I finished my anecdotes saying, “I wonder what that old JR is up to!” I went home, dug around online, found him, and sent him a message. It felt so out of the blue. I wasn’t even sure he would remember me since I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years.

It turned out that JR had been looking for people who had been in Estes Park during the summer when a horrible flood killed close to 150 people. At that time, that’s where I lived. In a sense, he conjured my email to him.

When my husband and I were looking to move out of Oak Park, we were originally looking in a city called Huntley. We had settled on a subdivision and a builder and were in the process of designing our house. While driving in the area, I kept seeing billboards that said, “Bigger Is Better!” I didn’t pay them any mind.

Around the same time, I went to get my hair done, but my regular stylist, Petra, was sick. I was chatting with the woman filling in for Petra, telling her how we were planning to move to Huntley. Even though Huntley is fifty miles away from the salon, that stylist lived in the exact subdivision we were looking at. She said, “Don’t move there! Move to Crystal Lake.”

The next time I saw the Bigger Is Better billboard, I noticed it was for a neighborhood in Crystal Lake. With the same builder we were working with. I drove over to look. There was one house available. The very model house we were designing. With all the upgrades we had chosen. On a much bigger lot. For a lot less than we were going to be paying in Huntley.

That’s magic.

I have a top hat full of stories like that. Hearing from a friend I hadn’t spoken to in over twenty years after seeing a photo of him the week before. Being magically unscathed from car accidents that should have killed me. Having jobs, jobs I was sure I wasn’t qualified for, even jobs I never applied for, fall into my lap. Books that had the information I needed appear. Teachers. Healers. Friends.

The secret is in believing that powerful magic swirls around you. In knowing that you can conjure, that you can co-create with the Universe. In never giving up on the childlike wonder that allows the magic to be real.

The Rest of the Story

Earlier this week I got together (virtually) with my friend Lindsay. She’s a medium. We sometimes swap gifts—I clear her energy, she tries to contact my dead relatives, but none of my ancestors ever come through. It’s always a message for someone else.

She said a woman was coming through, a grandmother or an aunt or a grandmother’s sister—there was a sisterly energy to her. She was a homemaker, wearing an apron. She had had a long life and died peacefully of old age. She said thank you. She also mentioned Heather, who had been struggling. This woman said she’d use roses as her sign that she was with the people she loved who were still living, especially Heather (“Who’s Heather?” Lindsay asked. “I don’t know a Heather,” I said.) who had been struggling, so watch for roses.

“She says, ‘I’m doing great up here!’” Lindsay reported… “And her name is Jane… or June.”

Do you remember my blog post from last week? Last week I wrote about June’s memorial service.

P.S. Lindsay does not subscribe to my newsletter. She doesn’t read my blog. I hadn’t talked to her in a few weeks, so she did not know about June’s service.

We create connections in our time on earth that last even after death.

We continue to love someone after they die, and they continue to love and care for us. We create ties that are not easy to break. Even after we’ve fulfilled our soul contract with a person, after we’ve learned the lesson they had to teach us (and us them), we can continue to travel in the same soul circles.

It’s kind of like staying in the same area as your extended family. We enjoy spending time with the people we love. Sure, we can text or call, but that’s not the same as hanging out. A video chat can never replace being in the presence of our family and friends, hanging out, sharing a meal, giving a hug.

June told Lindsay that she would continue to pass messages through me. I can’t wait to see what she has to say next.

Do these sorts of stories give you chills and goosebumps? Do they make you roll your eyes? Do they give you a sense of wonder or excitement? I’d love to hear your ghost stories.

Grief

Last week I attended the memorial service for the mother of one of my best friends. I couldn’t make it to June’s funeral mass, but the impromptu speeches at the reception following it were a tribute to how much she cared for others—and how much others cared for her.

Two days later, I found out that a friend of mine, Tim, had died. I hadn’t seen him in years. His life had spun out of control which so many times leads to alienation from people who were once close.

I pulled these two cards this morning as my cards of the day. Together, the Hermit and the Hanged Man remind me to go within to find a new perspective.

We think of grief as an emotion that begins when life ends. But for both June and Tim, their loved ones started grieving long before their deaths. June suffered from dementia for years. Or perhaps I shouldn’t say she suffered; she was always cheerful. It was her family members who suffered. And as Tim became increasingly isolated, his family and friends suffered the loss of his full presence as well.

Grief is wily. It’s sneaky. It doesn’t always show up when it’s expected. It can hide behind anger or guilt or even shame. It makes us forgetful and clumsy. Grief batters the immune system and can increase our blood pressure. It leaves us depleted and yet unable to sleep. It can hit us on every level: emotional, of course, but also physical and spiritual.

And we grieve all sorts of deaths. Break-ups. Moves. Job changes. Children moving out of the house. Chronic illness, alcohol or substance abuse that change a friend into someone we no longer recognize.

People who experience a loss probably get tired of others telling them to be gentle with themselves. But it’s true. We need to recognize that we’re grieving and that the anxiety or inability to concentrate, the loss of appetite or desire to do anything, are all signs that we’re mourning. We may cry. Or we might not.

Everyone grieves in their own way.

And in their own time.

The feelings of loss never go away, but they do eventually change into something less raw.

I feel it’s important for me to recognize my own feelings of fragility when someone I know experiences the death of a loved one. I try to take a step back and realign myself with my heart and my purpose. I remind myself that we’re all connected and that my friend’s loss is my loss. I hope I can extend sympathy, compassion, and empathy to them. But I also hope I can tap into what emotions it brings up in me and lead me to contemplation and a new perspective.

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